Hi,
I decided to sign up for this program that the City of Plano is offering, it is 11 Weeks long, and Once a Week for 3 hours.
You can never know enough about the area that you are selling, and crime knowledge and prevention and stats are always good to know, that is what this program teaches you.
I used to think of the police as that person who gives you speeding tickets and numerous other traffic violations, But I have learned that they are so much more than that.
Its an ongoing class and right now we are just at week 4 but the highlites are here:
1.Plano has 7 Lieutenants,,,,,,,,,,22 Sargents.............169 Officers, (allotted 180)....................2 public safety officers Supervisors,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,12 Public Safety Officers..............4 part time interns (college age students who want to become police officers)..............2 Admin Assist.................
There are 4 sectors in Plano,,,,,Sector A and B is the East Side (Custer is the division line) and Sector C and D are the West Side. ...............
There are 4 shifts.................1st Watch is at 5:30 A.M - 1:30 P.M........................3rd Watch is at 2:30 P.M - 11:30 P.M..................................5th Watch..........9:30 P.M - 7:00 A.M...............4th Watch.......is the "Power Watch" 5:00 P.M - 1:00 A.M.
An average Day they get 315 calls per day,,251 traffic stops per day,,,,,,,24 arrests,,,,15 crashes per day......and 3.5 DWI arrests per day......
car weighs 4,500 lbs,,(funny I had to go to police academy to learn this)
Allot of traffic info we did the 3rd week, we also got to shoot the laser gun and another speeding gun, and let me tell you these are really hard to operate,,you would think that they are easy,,but it is harder than it looks. Most police can tell someone is speeding just from looking and when they were guessing the speed of cars and then we laser-ed them their guess was always right on.
I learned that there are alot of things a police officer has to do at the same time, multi-tasking is a big part of his day/night.
In the 4th week , we were learning about the Criminal Investigating Division of the Police. This Division is
divided into two different parts .......Crimes against Property and Crimes against Persons.....The most common crime is BURGLARY IN A VEHICLE.............the biggest and most common sense item to take
away from this one is please please do not leave anything of any value in your car! And alothough it is
common sense the police are getting allot of burglary of guns,,,do not leave your gun in your car as well.
House burglary's 50% of residential burglaries In Plano were caused by the garage doors, either not being
looked or not rolled up. PLEASE LOCK YOUR GARAGE DOOR AND KEEP IT ROLLED DOWN, its sad that
times are like this, but that would save your likely hood of being robbed immensely. There is a forgery/Internet division, and a Juvenile , and general assignments division as well.
Other Dept. of the Plano Police include...............Assaults/Robberies, Intelligence Unit.......Family Violence Unit...........Narcotics Unit...........C.A.P.E.R.S. Unit...Unattended Deaths...and Sexual Crimes
A good source to find out if any registerd sex offenders is living near you go to www.offenderwatch.com
or www.TexasDepartmentofPublicSafety.com .
There are many officers and members of the Plano Police Department that give their time to this program.
I am doing a ride along in about 2 weeks , and normally I would not do anything like that, but these
police men and women are very safety oreintated and dedicated to keeping our city safe. The City of Plano does not have that much violent crimes.
A few suggestions I would like to pass along to anyone reading this is
A. Keep your garage door down
B. Don't leave items of value in car.
C. Write down all your serial numbers , and keep that paper safe.
D. Take copies of front and back of Credit Cards and also keep that paper safe.
There is a law in California which I think that Texas should apply, that is the 3rd strike law, because
a person there are so many people with more than 3 or 4 DUI's, a police pulled a guy over and
did a check and that guy had 13 DUI charges,,that's so crazy to me and in my opinion is unacceptable.
Well tune in later for more on the Plano Police update.
Comments(2)